It is known by the team as “Black Monday” – the Monday practice after a series in which Cyclone Hockey gets swept by its opponents.

Practice is mostly skating and conditioning for two hours followed by the usual land conditioning for an hour after practice. By the time the team is done with practice, the ice is so torn up that the Zamboni has to sweep it twice to get it smooth.

The 12th-ranked Cyclones had to participate in a Black Monday this week after losing both of their games this weekend in St. Louis to No. 9 Lindenwood 4-2 and 10-7.

After allowing 14 goals over the weekend, the Cyclones have to figure out what went wrong on defense.

Coach Al Murdoch said the team broke down in transition. He said the team did not get back on defense as hard as they should have, leading to breakaway goals.

“If the other team has a good transition from defense to offense and we don’t have a good transition from offense to defense, then they are going to beat us, and that is how they got 14 goals in two games,” Murdoch said.

He said the players needed to get into better shape so they could make the transitions more quickly, and took steps to get them in shape at practice on Monday.

Sophomore defenseman Bret Cornelius thought it was more then just a problem with conditioning.

“We just weren’t prepared for their type of forward style,” Cornelius said. “They played a roller-hockey style where they would chip it off the glass and they had another guy flying to get it. Our defense would be watching the play and all the sudden it would just be chipped off the glass and we looked back and there was a guy flying in the zone and we didn’t really adapt to it. We just weren’t thinking clearly out there.”

The Cyclones don’t feel that they played their best, but also felt they had to give credit to the opposition.

“I’m not going to take too much away from Lindenwood – they’ve got a good team,” Murdoch said.

Although the Cyclones got their offense rolling, Murdoch pointed out that they got 6 of their 7 goals on Saturday from one line.

“We have to bear down on our shots,” Cornelius said.

“All the players on our team have great shots, we are all physically strong, we just have to bear down more instead of trying to poke at the puck to get it in the net.”

Cornelius also said they need to work on their mental toughness. After taking a 4-2 lead in the first period, the Cyclones unraveled and allowed 5 goals in the second period.

“In the first period of the second game we came out flying,” Cornelius said. “After the first game we wanted to prove a point that even though Lindenwood is a higher rank than us, we want to play better. I think we proved in the first period that we could play with them and even better.

“Then before the second period in the locker room, we just let our guard down thinking, ‘We already got it,’ and we didn’t. We had two more periods to go and we let up and lost our focus on the game.”